“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

That these Jersey Shore kids went from being the brunt of the joke to writing books is mind boggling.

The Daily Beast features the Best of Jersey TV today. Sure, Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives of New Jersey and Jerseylicious, are fan favorites, but what do these annoying people do to represent the many other Jersey residents that are not Guidos and Guidettes? Let me tell you first hand….NOTHING. Rather than focus on the wonderful people who hail from New Jersey like Meryl Streep, Count Basie and Bruce Springsteen, we are now hyper focused on the Goombas like Snooki, Teresa Guidice and The Situation. A permanent blemish has scarred the Garden State. We can identify the turning point when New Jersey went from being the sleepy suburb of New York City to the tacky, heinous, smelly place it has become known as today.

I will never forgive Woody Allen. No, not for what he did to Mia Farrow by taking Soon Yi, her adopted daughter, as his lover and then, wife. That transgression was much easier to excuse compared to what he did to me, personally, being a resident from the state of New Jersey. Back in the 1970’s, Woody Allen made movies people actually went to see. His classics like Sleeper, Play It Again Sam and Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex contained condescending (and yes, perhaps humorous) references to my home state. These scathing digs made audiences howl with laughter, and he ingrained into pop culture the notion that people from “New Joisey” were disadvantaged. Sitting there in the dark sold-out Baronet-Coronet theater, I would slink down deep into the burgundy, polyester, uncomfortable seat, covering my head with the large tub of extra buttered popcorn as though a flashing neon arrow identified me as the lone resident from that sad little state. Seething, I vowed to get my revenge on Woody Allen one day. He’d made it so that I wished I had never heard of New Jersey, let alone being a resident. How was I ever going to achieve greatness along the lines of Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy or Mahatma Gandhi? How was I going to become a member of the fabulii? Once they discovered where I was from, was my membership to the fabulii at risk of being canceled? Somehow, someway, I was determined to wiggle my five foot-by-five foot frame into the pop culture vernacular and once there…happily crush Mr. Allen like a bug.